The Limit Of Reductionism In Consciousness Research

MASTER S THESIS Abstract Francis Crick began consciousness research in 1970s and gained remarkable achivements. ml 994 he published his 揳stonishing hypothesis? He that the essence of human抯 mind can be explained by the activities of neuro cells. He tries to use a pure neurobiological mode to explain consciousness. Some people hailed his radical reductionism opinions but some held critical attitude towards his hypothesis. In this paper I want to apply Marxism stand, opinion and method to correctly recommend Crick抯 hypothesis. In the first part of the paper I present some background of Crick抯 consciousness reseach including the current situation of the development of consciousness theories, the challenge that Marxism consciousness theory meet and the scientific premise of crick抯 consciousness research. In the second part I introduce Crick抯 methodology of consciousness research through general level and special level. Crick didn抰 agree with functionalists who study consciousness problem using black box methods. Instead he suggests we should design scientific experiments to study consciousness on molecule level. He also gives two basic assumptions to consciousness research. He himself chooses visual consciousness as a breakthrough in the practical studies and pays more attention to the study of brain damages and neural netwoks. in the third part I introduce Crick抯 consciousness theory including the basic characteristics of consciousness and the mechanism of visual consciousness. Crick considers that consciousness is related with the complexity of nervous system and is not necessarily related with language. There are many kinds of consciousness forms. On base of scientific experiments Crick presented his theory of visual consciousness. He thinks that consciousness is connected with certain form of memory, maybe shor-term memory and attention. In the fourth part I give comments on Crick抯 theory. The rational aspecters are as follows: Crick is the advocator of a new paradigm of consciousness research; He insists on materialist stance; His methodology is a inipotant guiding sense in consciousness research. The unsatifactory aspecters are as follows: It can抰 completely explain 揾ard problem?of consciousness; pessimism and agnosticism on qualia; the trend of paying attention to science and undeestimating philosophy. Explaining consciousness with neurobiological science is necessary but not completely. On this sense the 揳stonishing hypothesis?is not astonishing at all.